Artificial Intelligence or “An Imposter”: AI isn’t us and it never will be

By Samia Musleh

May 28, 2025

Intelligence that prevails without energy consuming it, Artificial Intelligence is a tool made to replicate us. As the stories of natural selection and history tell, that's competition. We are now in competition with a man-made device. Of course, at this point, it’ll be nearly impossible to completely get rid of it but the least we can do is limit its uses. 

As convenient as we like AI to be, it simply can’t compare to the mind of a human. Its role in customer service is what I find the most excruciating. For example, last week I called VisionWorks to make an appointment and they put me on the line with an AI. The amount of times I had to repeat myself was infuriating. As a society we should be advancing but this interaction only made me think, a few years ago, it wouldn’t have been like this. I shouldn’t have to be slowly mouthing the word “NO” on the line just so it knows what I’m saying. I'm aware of the fact that companies think that this will make them seem advanced but I can assure them it only displays them as lazy to not hire actual people. 

I’d rather not shame people, but I know some who don’t even know what to eat for breakfast without using AI. It’s like poison, it infects everything, even your own mind. And when your brain doesn't think for itself, it can become viciously indolent. A great historical example of how having everything done for you can lead to the fall of greatness would be the tale of Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty. A single man caused the turning point of the dynasty and it wasnt to the golden age. As Wanli’s duties were taken care of by scholarly officials, he stopped paying attention to them. Thousands of years later he keeps the record of China's laziest emperor. Now I’m afraid that with this all new consistent use of AI, people won’t use their minds anymore and instead of evolving we will eventually devolve. New technology is great but not one that strays us away from using our own mind. 

Some people argue that it’s a great step for advancement because of the role it plays in preventing crime. Law enforcement uses AI crime-mapping to detect places where crime may potentially be happening so officers can report there. AI goes based on trends. AI may potentially target areas dominant of a certain race just because that's the pattern recognition installed in the system of law enforcement and completely ignore areas that it’s not built to look out for. Its lack of emotional intelligence can lead to further discrimination within law enforcement and that's one more step back for society. I don’t condemn its occasional use in law enforcement for the sake of justice. But all the time? That's too risky and an immediate no. According to the NAACP, some US senators have even gone against AI predicting policing tools by writing letters to the Department of Justice emphasizing that to cease funding for it as it can worsen the unequal treatment of people. 

AI shouldn’t have taken over the way it already has. And when I say take over I don’t mean what they show us in the movies like some sort of apocalypse but I mean economically. People are losing their jobs to something that could never be as efficient as us. Companies prefer a fixed cost (robots) over a variable cost (workers) but what they don’t realize is that AI costs us our humanity.  It could be the smartest machine in the world but because it lacks emotional intelligence, it will never be able to work with humans right. I am well aware that at this point we are probably never going to get rid of AI, we’ve swept too far deep but we should minimize its uses.